The Dragon's Path

mouth and drew a deep lungful herself.
    “It seems my husband is making her husband terribly unhappy,” she said.
    “Her husband is trying to kill yours.”
    “I know, but it hardly seems polite to point it out when the poor thing’s broken down in front of me. Besides which, you’re winning, aren’t you? I can hardly see her asking mercy if the warm winds were blowing on Ebbinbaugh.”
    “Asking mercy was she?”
    “Not in so many words,” Clara said, relinquishing Dawson’s lap but not his pipe. “But she wouldn’t, would she? Terribly rude, and I’m fairly certain Feldin didn’t know she’d come, so don’t start figuring her into all your calculations and intrigues. Sometimes a frightened woman is only a frightened woman.”
    “And still, I don’t plan to make her days any better,” Dawson said. Clara shrugged and looked away. When he spoke next his tone was less playful. “I’m sorry about it. For you and for her. If that helps.”
    For a long moment, Clara was silent, sipping smoke from his pipe. In the dim light, she looked younger than she was.
    “Our worlds are growing apart, husband,” Clara said. “Yours and mine. Your little wars, my peaces. War is winning out.”
    “There’s a time for war,” Dawson said.
    “I suppose,” she said. “I… suppose. Still, remember that wars end. Try to be sure that there’s something worthhaving at the other end. Not all your enemies are your enemies.”
    “That’s nonsense, love.”
    “No it isn’t,” she said. “It’s just not how you see the world. Phelia’s no part of whatever you and Feldin hate in each other any more than I am. But she’s at stake, as am I and our children. Phelia is your enemy because she has to be, not because she chose it. And when the end comes, remember that a great number of the people on the other side have lost a great deal and didn’t pick the fight.”
    “Would you have me stop?” he asked.
    Clara laughed, a deep, purring sound. The smoke rose from her mouth, curling in the candlelight.
    “Shall I ask the sun not to set while I’m at it?”
    “For you, I would,” Dawson said.
    “For me, you would try, and you’d batter yourself to nothing in the attempt,” she said. “No, do what you think needs doing. And think about how you would want Feldin to treat me, if he won.”
    Dawson bowed his head. Around them, the beams and stones settled in the winter cold, popping and muttering to themselves. When he looked up again, her gaze was on him.
    “I will try,” he said. “And if I forget…?”
    “I’ll remind you, love,” Clara said. “It’s what I do.”
    T he feast that night began an hour before sunset and was to last until all the candles had burned themselves out. Lord Ternigan sat at the high table with his wife and brother. Simeon sat at the far end, Aster beside him in red velvet and cloth-of-gold looking embarrassed whenever Lady Ternigan spoke to him. The rider who’d taken top honors in the hunt—the half-Jasuru son of a noble family from Sarakalwho was traveling in Antea for God knew what reason—joined them, nodding at everything and contributing nothing.
    The best tapestries of Ternigan’s collection hung on the walls, beeswax candles burned in holders of sculpted crystal, and the dogs that lurked around the tables wore cloths on their backs in the colors of every noble house in Antea as a bit of levity to brighten the night. Dawson sat at the second table, near enough to hear what was said, and at the far end of the table with only five people between them, Feldin Maas. Ternigan once again evenhandedly marking that his allegiance was negotiable as a whore’s virtue. Phelia Maas sat her husband’s side stealing watery glances at Dawson. He ate his soup. It had too much salt, not enough lemon, and the fish still had bones in it.
    “Lovely soup,” Clara said. “I remember my aunt—not your mother, Phelia, dear, Aunt Estrir who married that awful fop from Birancour—saying that the best thing for river fish is lemon zest.”
    “I remember her,” Phelia said, clutching at the connection almost desperately. “She came back for my wedding, and she affected that terrible accent.”
    Clara laughed, and for a moment things might almost have been at ease.
    Behind Dawson, King Simeon cleared his throat. Dawson couldn’t say what about the sound caught him, but the hair on the back of his neck rose. From the pinched, bloodless lips and the wineglass trapped halfway between